One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Lost in Space: "The Derelict" (September 22, 1965)

In
“The Derelict,” the second-ever episode of Lost in Space (1965 – 1968), Maureen
Robinson (June Lockhart) dons a space suit and attempts to save John (Guy
Williams), who is outside the Jupiter 2 on a delicate repair mission gone
awry.

As
the Robinson parents attempt to return inside the vessel, the airlock jams and
a flaming comet nears. If they can’t
make it inside the ship’s protective hull, they will burn up.

A
last minute rescue brings the Robinson elders inside, and sometime later, John
reflects in his journal that the Jupiter 2 must have gone through hyperspace at
some point, which accounts for its extreme distance from Earth, and the crew’s
inability to pinpoint the ship’s location. Robinson also declares that the man
responsible for the ship’s plight, Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris) will henceforth be treated as a “stowaway.”

Even
as Alpha Control declares “America’s
first space family” lost, Will (Bill Mumy) picks up a signal somewhere
nearby the Jupiter 2. Smith suspects his own people are attempting to rescue
him, but the truth is far mysterious.
The source of the signal is a derelict of alien origin.

The
Jupiter 2 is pulled inside the derelict, and John uses the opportunity to
search the vessel for a star map that could pinpoint their location. Meanwhile,
Will discovers the denizens of the ship...and Dr. Smith promptly shoots one of
the aliens.

“The
Derelict” has always been one of my favorite episodes of Lost in Space because I
enjoy both the idea of humans encountering a mysterious alien space vessel, and
because the aliens -- weird, electrically-charged bubble-things -- are not
humanoid in design

Still,
on this re-watch I couldn’t help but notice how long it takes to get to the
central action. The first portion of the episode, with Maureen and John still
on an ill-fated spacewalk takes forever to resolve.

And everything is slowed
down exponentially by the creative choice to act as if outer space is water,
and all physical movements are occurring, essentially, in molasses. The end of “The Reluctant Stowaway” and the
beginning of “The Derelict” are harmed to a large extent by the fact that the
story -- and the characters themselves -- move so slowly. This is one area where the fifty year old
series has not held up well.

Once
the Jupiter 2 enters the alien ship (which folds open in glorious, mid-1960s,
pre-CGI miniature work…), the action picks up.
The Robinsons are confronted with an unknown species, a spaceship
interior littered in cob-webs, and then truly alien appearing beings. Leave it to Dr. Smith to turn an opportunity for
friendship into a disastrous first contact experience.

Still,
this “chance encounter” with the aliens grants the Robinsons the information
they need. And they set off towards a nearby planet, where they hope to
settle. The setting of the alien ship
provides some great production design. I
like the weird computer alcove, where Major West and John Robinson seek to
extract information. And the alien first emerges (near Will) behind an area
that looks very much like brain matter.

After
so much 1960s “future” tech in the first episode, the interior of the derelict --
dark and frightening -- makes a great visual diversion.

Indeed,
I like the mysterious aspects of “The Derelict,” and the idea that the
Robinsons are now un-tethered from Earth not only in terms of location and
communication, but in terms of chronology. They reckon here with a spaceship
that could be ages old, and certainly is the product of a culture far different
from their own.

The
special effects in this episode area all extraordinary, from the comet that approaches
the Jupiter 2 to the composites from the ship’s control room that show the
approach to the derelict. The landing
sequence of the Jupiter 2, in dark, chaotic terrain, also holds up remarkably
well. Perhaps aided by the moody black-and-white photography, these moments don’t
show their age at all.

The
alien beings -- when they are first seen -- are similarly impressive.
Non-humanoid in design, they appear to be genuinely from a different world and
different form of evolution. They only
time they don’t impress is during the final chase, when they seem to scoot
across the ship’s floor as if on wheels (like Daleks).

In
terms of characterization, and in particular, Dr. Smith, John Robinson is right
to treat him as a “stowaway” but in the very next episode, “Islands in the Sky,”
he still has free run of the ship. There’s
an old joke (originated by David Gerrold?) about Dr. Smith being given a tour
of the nearest airlock. There are times in these early episodes, with lives
grievously threatened, that Smith is treated too well by the others. He is constantly endangering the crew, and
represents not just a current threat, but a future threat as well. If I were Robinson, I might not have tossed
him out the airlock, but rather marooned him on that alien derelict and let him
take his chances with the crew that he attacked.

That’s his problem…let him clean it up.

Speaking
of airlocks, we’re only in episode two of Lost in Space at this juncture, and
already the Jupiter 2 is malfunctioning a lot.
A sensor stops working. The airlock jams. And so on. This thing needed a shakedown cruise!

1 comment:

"The Derelict" is perhaps LIS's best shot at the concept of fine television SF. There still would have been a little of that 'stovepipe' technology permeating the visual component, but thematically the series would have been more fulfilling.

It would be a long wait for "The Antimatter Man" to arrive, the other fine Lost in Space episode.

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award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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